Student majors (n=159) and faculty (n=26) in the sociology department of the University of Akron (Ohio) each rated academic advisors' level of responsibility for 42 advising tasks. Statistical analysis found the groups differed significantly on two of four dimensions: advising students on campus resources and planning for the future. (Author/DB)

Interviews were conducted with 16 paraeducators providing support to students with moderate to severe disabilities in general education classrooms. Paraeducators reported numerous roles and responsibilities as well as considerable independence in decision making and program implementation despite their limited training. Implications for the use,…

Both deaf and hearing mothers (N=23) were observed in videotaped face-to-face interactions with their infants (also either deaf or hearing) and maternal touching behavior was coded for intensity, location, and type. Deaf mothers were especially responsive to tactile needs of their deaf infants. However, hearing mothers of deaf infants also…

Partnerships pose opportunities and challenges for school principals, especially when involving organizations and programs outside education. Collaborative school leaders must be able to appreciate diverse perspectives, understand the big picture, gather and use data for planning, motivate themselves and others, facilitate group efforts, solve…

A Norwegian study of 81 schools in 42 randomly selected municipalities suggests that the principal can promote school development activities among teaching staff by actively creating an innovative school culture. This role (and central-office support) may be more important in secondary than in elementary schools. (Contains 39 references.) (MLH)

The Sibling Interaction Scale (SIS), an observational tool, was employed to investigate the interactions between 52 siblings (ages 1-20) with and without disabilities. Differences between nondisabled/disabled sibling pairs were found in the complexity of their sentences, the interpretation of the behaviors, and the roles they engaged in.…

Presents a distributed connectionist model of the perception of spoken words, employing speech representation that combines lexical and abstract phonological information, with lexical access as a direct mapping on this distributed representation. The article examines the integration of partial cues to phonological identity, showing that the model…

Discusses an exploration of depth in landscape painting using Vincent van Gogh's "Starry Night" as an example. Used computer drawing software for children to allow students to create their own interpretations of "Starry Night" while exploring means of portraying depth in two-dimensional art. (DSK)

Three experiments compared infants' reactions to videos of normally responsive women varying in eye contact. Found that, relative to frontal faces, three-month olds smiled less at images averting head and eye (H&I), head alone (H), and closing eyes (ECL) but not at averting eyes (E). Five-month-olds smiled less at H&I, E, and ECL but not…

Twenty-six expert adult readers, 13 of whom were blind, were compared for how they perceived and retrieved written information. The study found that braille readers were not limited to the isolated identification of individual braille characters as previously thought, but could integrate greater quantities of written information. Implications for…

This study examined the abilities of adult listeners to discriminate and identify temporal order of sounds presented in tonal sequence. Listeners had either normal hearing or mild to moderate sensorineural hearing losses. In general, older listeners performed more poorly than younger listeners on the discrimination and identification tasks. Order…

Investigated the role of gender, gender role identity, rape myth acceptance, and initial resistance in assigning blame in the case of acquaintance rape, and studied the perceived avoidability of the assault for 355 female and 179 male college students. The gender differences in responses are discussed. (SLD)

Seventeen children (ages 6-11) with developmental apraxia of speech were administered tests of identification and discrimination of resynthesized and synthesized monosyllabic words differing in place of articulation of the initial voiced stop consonants and intensity of the third formant. Results indicated no phonetic processing deficit in…

The multiple and demanding roles of the college president are examined, particularly as sources of personal and professional stress. It is concluded that the importance of the president's job in the current world context, and the positive impact the administrator can have, justify taking on those pressures and challenges. (MSE)

Twelve male children (ages 2-6) with autism were found to be less accurate than 12 typical male children in decoding nonverbal facial expressions of happiness, sadness, or anger in videotaped vignettes. However, children with autism were able to identify happiness vignettes at above-chance levels. (Author/JDD)